


#WeStandWithOrlando

by Wiarda



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: (ish?), M/M, Post Winter Soldier (but like two years later or smth), Public Kissing, Rating may go up I don't know, The 2016 Orlando Shooting, it probably will
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-26
Updated: 2016-06-30
Packaged: 2018-07-18 10:40:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7311697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wiarda/pseuds/Wiarda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve helps making a support video. The only thing he has to do? Kiss a male stranger.</p><p>Except that the stranger isn't as much of a stranger to him. He knows him. The real problem is, his stranger doesn't know <i>him</i> anymore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> DISCLAIMER: This fanfic contains mentions of the Orlando shooting of 2016. I have, by no means, written this fanfic to somehow make fun of or cheapen the message of #WeStandWithOrlando or to indirectly demean the victims or their families. I'm horrified and appalled that something like this still happens nowadays and I suppose that writing about it kind of helps me deal with it, personally. I get it if reading about this in fanfiction really doesn't sit well with some people, but please understand that I don't mean disrespect.
> 
> Also, this is my first Marvel fic, let alone Stucky fic, on this website, so bear with me. I'm also not a native speaker and I'm too lazy to get this beta'd, so any mistakes are completely mine (and don't be shy to point them out to me!). I hope you enjoy! ^^

“Mr. Rogers!” The young woman behind the camera almost jumped as Steve opened the door. “Oh, wow! I didn’t think you’d actually show up - well, not that I thought you’d give us the cold shoulder, but I thought… You know, Jeffrey always screws around, you know? He said he’d arranged for Obama to come too one time, for a video, and of course he was talking out of his ass, but I just didn’t believe -”

Steve just stood there, in the door opening, feeling even less comfortable now than he’d done when Tony had first suggested this. Still, in the past few years, he had learnt how social discomfort worked in the twenty-first century; just smile, pretend you know what you’re doing and hope they fall for it. “Yeah,” he said lamely. “Well, I’m here, I’m real.”

The girl - because honestly, she couldn’t have been older than twenty - smiled so brightly at him that it almost looked like her face was going to break. Her red curls trembled with excitement. “Come in, come in! Have you ever done anything like this before?”

Steve let the studio door fall shut behind him and walked over to the part of the room where a couple of college kids had rolled out a white background already. Suddenly, it felt creepily real. This was something that was actually going to happen and he was going to have to do it.

_Focus, Rogers. You’re a soldier. If you can handle death and pain, surely you can handle shooting a video._

“You’re asking me if I have experience kissing strange men from the streets?” he replied, absentmindedly rubbing his hands together.

“Oh- no, no, I wasn’t jumping to conclusions, and I certainly don’t want to imply that you have, like, I don’t know, some sort of crazy sex life, or something.” Her face was bright red at this point, and the fit of giggles that followed sounded more terrified than happy. “I mean - i-it’s fine if you do! To each their own, if you want to kiss strange men on the streets then go kiss some strange men on the streets. You’re Captain America, you can kiss whoever you want - oh, shoot.” She hid her face in her hands, and for one moment, Steve was convinced she was about to burst into tears, until she took a deep breath and removed her hands again, eyes - thankfully - still dry. “God, I’m a mess, I don’t know what’s happening. I’ll just shut up.”

That was probably for the best, yes, but Steve couldn’t help but… pity her, even if it was just a bit. “What’s your name?”

The girl gave him an apologetic look. “Abby.”

“You’re doing fine, Abby. Relax. It looks like you know how to work that thing,” Steve said, with a nod at the weirdly complicated camera in front of her, “so I promise, it’ll all be fine.”

Abby smiled at that, or at least tried to, bless her soul, and took a deep breath. “Suppose you’re right.” She cleared her throat, ran a hand through her hair and recollected herself. “So, back to the start. I’m getting the vibe that you already kind of know what this video is going to be about?”

Yes, he very much knew that, and while it was for a good cause, it still made Steve’s stomach kind of twist, just thinking about it. He had never been much of a casual kisser. He had never been much of a kisser, period. Ice tended to cockblock. “Yes.”

“And you know what it’s for?”

“The shooting victims in Orlando.”

Abby nodded. “Yeah. The entire purpose of this video is to raise awareness and to draw attention to several foundations who help victims cover their medical bills, and such things, which is why it’s great that we have you.”

At that, Steve raised his eyebrow. “Why me, exactly?”

“Why you?” Abby laughed. “Well, only because you’re one of the most influential people in the United States. Without you, it’s a video with a message. _With_ you, it’s a video with a message that has gone _viral_.” She looked at the tiny screen on the side of the camera, moved it around a little bit, frowned, and then froze as her gaze swept over her watch. “Oh, fuck. Already behind on schedule. Great, Abs.”

“Well, I do try,” Steve replied, but the only reaction he got was a blank, questioning face. “Never mind. That was a joke.”

“Right,” Abby replied, with a smile that made her look even more confused than before. “Well, ready to meet your lucky street kiss guy?”

Sweaty palms, beating heart. Nope, definitely not. Ready to fight for support for innocent people who had been harmed for no reason? He was born ready for that. “Bring it on.”

Abby gave him two thumbs up, pushed her huge glasses a bit further up her nose and walked back to the door Steve had just come into. “Oh, and if you’d like to stand on the left side cross on the floor, already, that would be fantastic. Face directed at the door, people want to see the initial reaction too.” 

So that was what he did, eyes on the door, hands behind his back. At least making it seem like he knew what he was doing, or that he was perfectly fine just standing there, as Abby called in some guy whose name Steve didn’t quite hear, but who stepped inside soon enough for it not to matter anymore.

Tall, broad, brown hair pulled back into a bun, wearing a hoodie in the middle of the summer. A strange figure, but it was even stranger how he wasn’t strange at all.

“Bucky,” he whispered breathlessly. It was Bucky. It was him. _It was him_. Gone missing after he’d dragged him out of a river, _a wanted man_ , had gone completely missing for over a year, and there he was, smiling at him in a way he hadn’t seen in over sixty years.

A way that wasn’t Winter Soldier at all. This was a Bucky who had no idea who Steve was, who had no idea what his mission was supposed to be, and he had no idea how to feel about that.

“Jim, this is Steve Rogers. Steve, this is Jim,” Abby introduced the two of them, as Bucky walked over to the right crossed out area in front of the camera. Still that grin on his face, with an ease in his footfalls that he hadn’t had since the War. 

Steve bit his lip, hard. It hurt; he wasn’t dreaming. It was real.

“So,” Bucky said, and God, his voice. Real. “Are we just going to dive straight into this, then?”

Abby laughed and took place on her little director’s stool behind the camera. “Well, this thing has been rolling from the start, so begin at whatever point you feel comfortable enough.”

Steve looked Bucky straight in the eye. “We need to tal-”

But Bucky stepped in, and before Steve knew actually knew where he had wanted to go with that sentence, or what on earth he had wanted to talk about with a brainwashed assassin Bucky in a film studio without a shield on him, there was one warm hand cupping his face and one gloved one on his hip. Then, a press of lips against his. Soft, chaste, quick. It was over before he knew what had hit him. 

And all the noise was gone. Mind was all blank. It was just too much to take in, so he stopped taking it in. Simple as that.

Bucky didn’t pull back; he just moved his head away enough to give Steve some space. “That okay with you?”

Mind blank, heart racing. The only thing he heard was static noise inside his brain. “Yeah,” he breathed. “That was fine.”

Bucky smirked. “Good. Let’s kick it up a notch then, hmm?”

His face came closer again, but this time, instincts kicked in right in time for Steve to actually react. He tilted his head a bit, courteously brought his hand around his waist to place his hand on Bucky’s lower back, and when he felt that warm pressure against his lips for a second time, he slowly came to his senses. He tilted his head to give better access, felt stubble scratch over his skin, breathed in and caught the scent of unfamiliar aftershave - but right when his bottom lip got trapped between two warmer ones and a hint of teeth grazed over it, the underlying scent of green bar soap and musk and Bucky hit him like a train at full speed, causing his stomach to flip and a shiver to run up his spine.

This was his Bucky, right in his arms, and he was alive.

Almost instinctively, he moved his hand that wasn’t already pulling Bucky close gently on his chest - broader than it used to be - and it barely took any pressure to feel a firm, almost aggressive pulse under his careful fingertips. Bucky was alive. His heart was beating, his body was warm, his mouth was soft.

Suddenly, it wasn’t enough. Suddenly, the gentle kiss had to be hard, had to be feverish, had to be there, with rough hands and pressing bodies and clashing teeth, because it all came back. Steve could see him falling, and falling, and falling to his death, over and over and over, hanging from the train, almost within reach, and he was so close, and _every time_ , he failed him.

Steve was almost hyperventilating at this point; with Bucky pulled so close it almost hurt, tongues meeting like that was the way it was supposed to go, like it had always gone like that. It hadn’t. That had never been more than a fleeting thought, something he’d thrown over his shoulder as soon as it popped into his mind, because back in those days, it was simply not done, so not doing that was exactly what Steve did. Now, times had changed. He had changed. Bucky had changed, too, but that was not the thing that mattered. What mattered was that there was something beating against his chest and it wasn’t his own heart, not _only_ his heart.

And then, as soon as it had flared up, the kiss grew soft again, almost quiet, apologetic. Steve expected Bucky to pull back. He didn’t know anything, after all. He probably just thought he’d been enthusiastic, or a very good actor, at the least. How could he know how it was charged when he didn’t even remember his own name?

“I’m sorry,” Steve heard himself whisper against his lips, one hand brought up to the side of Bucky’s face, so he could stroke his thumb over his cheek. His breath caught when he bumped over a scar that had definitely not been there before his fall. _Your fault, Rogers. You failed him._ “I’m so sorry, Buck.”

Now he did pull back a little, with a sort of confused frown on his face, but his eyes were open and honest. Steve felt his throat contract. “What?”

“Nothing,” he brushed it off, with another small peck, but there were tears already stinging behind his eyes. It was all a lie. This wasn’t Bucky. They’d erased Bucky. Bucky was gone, deleted, even if he still had his voice and still used the same soap and - well, even if he still wasn’t letting go. Maybe because he was polite enough not to pull back until Steve let go of him, but he allowed himself to have hope that maybe, somewhere deep down, he knew too.

Maybe.

Steve ran his thumb over his jawline one last time before he forced himself to step back, lightheaded, almost sick with how utterly confused he felt. Half aroused and about to cry was a combo he hadn’t felt for a long time, let alone this intensely.

“That,” Abby started, “was,” breathless, “gorgeous. Wow. You two are naturals, I’m telling you. Really, if you don’t mind me saying - it honestly looked as if there was something… _there_ , you know.”

Bucky blinked, but still refused to stop attempting to make eye contact with Steve again. Steve, on his part, forced himself to stare blankly at the wall over his shoulder until his hands stopped shaking and his breathing got even. This wasn’t good. This couldn’t be good. “Yeah, I know,” Bucky whispered, probably mostly to himself, but it certainly didn’t help with Steve’s hammering heart.

Still, hope would be useless. Hope was for hopeful situations. Bucky was gone. He had to keep telling himself that. Just because he hadn’t kissed the Winter Soldier, didn’t mean he had kissed his Bucky.

“I need to get some air.” He offered Abby an apologetic look and went to give Bucky a more or less identical one (if not a much quicker version), when a hand around the crook of his elbow stopped him.

The frown on Bucky’s face said enough. “You okay? I didn’t hurt you, did I?”

In that moment, Steve was oh so glad that he’d had the decency not to look him over, or he might have gotten the wrong message. He just shook his head, put up the best reassuring smile he could manage and then put all his strength into keeping his cool as he walked out the door with an aching heart and trembling hands.

“Fuck,” he muttered to himself, which said enough by itself, because he wasn’t a fan of swearing. He’d soon figured out that he was the only one in the twenty-first century with that opinion. He leant his head against the wall to stop the world from spinning around him, and slammed his fist against it in frustration. “Fuck!”

It was as if he could feel the cracks forming in his face, his fingers, his limbs - his heart. That was decades worth of grief, right there, dug up by a warm mouth, a strong grip and the smell of green bar soap. Apparently, that was enough. Green bar soap was enough to make Captain America break down into tears. If the tabloids found out about that, he probably would never hear the end of it.

“Wow. Are you okay?” It was Abby, not Bucky, who pulled him out of it. She put her hand on his crumbling shoulder. “Do you need some water?”

“I’m fine,” he automatically replied. Then, he quickly wiped his face dry and hoped his eyes just wouldn’t look as puffy and red as they felt. Deep breaths. Everything would be fine. _Just keep your shit together for another half hour, Rogers. No tears until you get home_. “Has Bu- I mean, is - um, is Jim still in there?”

Abby shook her head. “He left when you did. Said he left the stove on.”

Steve huffed a shaky laugh at that. Even though it sounded like a crappy excuse, he actually had left the stove on once. The smell of gas when they’d come back home had been nauseating. 

“Actually, I was hoping you could help me with the ending of the video?” Abby suggested carefully. “Unless you’ve got a stove to check on, too, of course. There’s just a few details that need to be put into the video as well, and I thought I was going to say them, but people would probably take them more seriously if you do it.”

“Details like what?”

Abby shrugged. “What the video is for, where people can donate, that kind of stuff.”

One breath. Two. Three. Deep ones, too. “Yeah, okay,” he finally said. “I can do that.”

So he followed her back in, quickly read through the lines she’d typed out for herself and was put back in front of the camera, on the cross where Bucky had stood - but he was gone now, so time to stop thinking about it. He was here to help people, so that was where his mind was supposed to be. Helping people.

“And, action.”

Steve blinked, brought up the memory of the script, and blanked. “No, wait,” he said. “Is it… is it okay if I try and do it off-script?”

It seemed to surprise Abby as much as it surprised himself. “Yeah, sure. If you keep it around the same length, go wild.” She gestured for him to step a little more to the left and nodded. “Okay, take two. And, action.”

“Love is love,” he started, and even though those words resonated in his head as cheap and cliché, they felt right. “I come from a time and place where people didn’t get that yet. Where some people were shamed and excluded for who they loved, where God’s greatest gift to all of us was even made illegal to some. I grew up in that time and I remember the frustration, but mostly the blind assumption, that that would be fixed in the future. People couldn’t stay ignorant forever.”

He cleared his throat and clenched his jaw for a moment. “It’s 2016 now. 49 killed after a shooting in a gay club. The future is now, America, and it’s time we own up to it. Sexual orientation shouldn’t matter anymore. Human lives should.”

_Human lives should_. And there Bucky was again, in his mind, falling and falling and screaming. Steve felt his hands shake, and he just hoped that the camera wasn’t one of those expensive ones that caught teary eyes well. “So, please donate for those who are still struggling to save theirs.” He fought to get the words off of his tongue clearly. Then he took a deep breath, looked away for a moment, and pretended not to care as he felt a tear drip down to his chin. “My name is Steve Rogers, and I stand with Orlando.”

Abby blinked behind the camera, stopped rolling and looked at him, clearly not knowing what to say. “That was…”

“A mess,” Steve filled in. “I didn’t even say where they can donate. And, well, you know. Sorry about the… well.” He quickly brushed the tear away and cleared his throat. “Rough day, that’s all.”

“No, that was perfect,” Abby replied. “Raw emotion, that’s what people want. That’s what drives them. I can put a link in the description when I upload it, no problem. That. Was. Brilliant.” She was already searching through the files on the laptop placed on top of a bar stool, next to the camera. “I’ll be working with this immediately. I don’t think I can get another take like that, so I suppose you’re free to go now.”

Steve raised his eyebrows at that. “Seriously? In one take?”

“Yep. That was good.” She looked up again and offered him a hand. Her fingernails were painted a weirdly bright shade of green. When Steve shook it, he noticed that they were a bit sweaty. “Thank you so much. You’ll hear from me when I upload it, okay?”

“Sounds fantastic,” he said, without too much enthusiasm. “Good luck with editing,” he added, before he turned on his heel and left, with raw eyes and an aching chest.


	2. Chapter Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Upped the rating to T. Not really for action (yet), but I guess a G-rated fic with homophobic slang didn't really work for me. So, consider this a warning; homophobia and swearwords ahead.
> 
> Oh, and DISCLAIMER: I've never been to New York and I don't get the subway system there at all. I don't even know if there's a stop at Central Park. If not, let's pretend there is in the MCU, heh.

“So,” Tony started, as he walked into their shared kitchen. As he moved, a holographic screen kept following him, and he used his finger to replay an achingly familiar video on it. “Do I need to put you on suicide watch, or is your skull really that thick?”

Steve wasn’t even surprised; he simply took another sip of his coffee. “Good morning to you, too.”

Tony turned around to face him; the grimace around his mouth said enough about how much humor he could bear, this morning. “Dead serious, Cap. When exactly did you decide to not just meet, not just _converse_ , but stick your tongue down the throat of the man who tried to kill you - and _on camera_ , for that matter? I mean, I’ve seen a lot of dumb shit. Hell, I’ve done even more dumb shit, but this is the cherry on the moronic shitcake.”

Bruce, who sat across from Steve, pushed his glasses further up the bridge of his nose and folded his real, old school paper. “What are we talking about?”

“Steve kissed a guy and now Tony’s flipping his shit,” Natasha filled him in, as she plucked the paper from his fingers.

Bruce pulled up his eyebrow. “Can’t say I saw this coming, but I don’t really see the problem either.”

“He didn’t kiss a _guy_ , he kissed a _killer_ ,” Tony clarified, as he made a sweeping motion with his hand and sent the screen to fly straight in front of Bruce’s nose. Steve tensed. “This is the same _guy_ that was brainwashed to murder him two years ago.”

Bruce cleared his throat, and judging from the flush on his face, he hadn’t really been prepared for what Tony had shoved in his face. Natasha, however, took no shame in watching it with her full attention. “How do you even know it’s him? I can barely see his face with Steve all over him.”

Tony shut the video off again, much to Bruce’s relief, judging from the look on his face. “He’s wearing gloves in June, and I’m good with faces.”

“You called your downstairs receptionist Maggie yesterday,” Natasha commented.

“Because her name is Maggie.”

“Her name is Claudia.”

“Fine. I’m good with faces, bad with names. That’s not the point. Rogers is losing his mind.” He gave a harsh shove against his shoulder; Steve spilled his hot coffee all over his T-shirt, and immediately jumped up. “What the hell were you thinking? He could have strangled you -”

“Enough,” Steve barked, as he pulled his ruined shirt over his head and threw it on the floor with way more force than necessary. “He doesn’t remember, alright? He doesn’t even remember his own damn name, Tony! What would you have done, hm? If you had been in my shoes, and - I don’t know, Pepper had no clue who you were anymore, and somebody told you to kiss her after all this time apart, what would you have done?”

Tony had a snarl on his face. “That’s different,” he snapped. “Sorry, have we all forgotten that he _tried to kill you_? Pepper never did that. Might have wanted to, but she never tried. Apples and oranges, Cap. And put a fucking shirt on, for Christ’s sake.”

“Or not,” Natasha muttered.

“Don’t go there,” Tony warned. Then he looked at Steve again, clearly still displeased. “You know that this isn’t over, right? Sometime soon, somebody will recognise him. HYDRA’s files are all online, so it’s only a matter of time before somebody puts one and one together, and you’ll be in deep shit.”

“Thank you for your concern,” Steve said sharply, as he took his shirt off of the floor and passive aggressively folded it, before he shot Tony a last, sour look,turned on his heel, and left.

* * *

As Abby had predicted, the video was the trending topic on both different social media and even the press by the next day. Unfortunately, Steve didn’t have Twitter and usually read the newspaper _after_ he’d done his early morning run, so he hadn’t even made it to Central Park yet when the first comments started coming - comments he hadn’t been warned for.

“Hey, Captain America,” some kid said. He sat across from him in the subway, about sixteen, maybe, with pimples on his greasy cheeks and his pants clinging so low to his hips that Steve was sure his ass was falling out. “So you’re a fag now?”

Steve’s eyebrows shot up. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me,” the boy snapped. “Can’t believe it. America’s greatest hero, some fucking homo.”

“Watch your mouth,” an elderly lady two seats away intervened. She offered him a polite smile. “I think it’s very brave to come out like that, dear boy.”

Ah. So that what it was about. “Thank you, but that video wasn’t a coming out, it was a call for attention.”

The boy scoffed. “Yeah, well, you did a great job at that. It certainly did make you look like an attention whore. And a cock slut.”

A mother covered the ears of her young daughter and shot the boy a look. “One more word out of that homophobic fuckhole of yours and I swear to God, I’ll throw you on the tracks.”

Wow. Okay. “Let’s keep it calm here, okay? No reason to fight.”

“Right, see? This is what I mean. I used to look up to you, man. Now you’re just a gay little wuss.”

The train slowed down and stopped, and the doors opening was probably the best distraction Steve could have wished for, because he had no idea how to respond to that. He wasn’t going to kick a scene, even if every fiber of his being screamed to defend his damned right to be who he was in front of this pathetic teenager, but it wouldn’t be worth it. He already wasn’t enjoying the spotlights that were on him because of that video, let alone the magnifier they would put on him if he assaulted a minor.

“Oh, hell no,” the boy said, as he put his hands up in the air. “I give up. I’m not going to share a space with Captain Faggot _and_ his boyfriend.”

That almost made Steve jump. It certainly made his heart hammer, without a doubt, because the kid was right; it was Bucky that stepped inside, and it was Bucky that came to sit across from him, on the kid’s seat, as he stomped off. He had a headset on, and his eyes were focussed on the display of his phone, so he hadn’t really caught sight of Steve yet, but Steve could already feel the whole energy around him shift. Everything was tense. Not just that, _everyone_ was tense. And they were all staring.

It took five seconds, five of the longest seconds of Steve’s life, before Bucky looked up, looked down again, then realised what he’d seen and looked up one final time. Slowly, he pulled his headset down, around his neck, and joined in with the staring. “Wow. Hi.”

“Hi,” Steve answered, feeling like an utter idiot. It was only now that it struck him how piercingly blue Bucky’s eyes were. “Where’re you headed?”

“Uh.” His eyes flicked up to the map of the stations above the seats. “Two stops over. Central Park.”

Steve nodded. Of course he was. His stomach flipped. “Yeah, me too.”

“Good.” Why was it good? Steve rubbed over his face and stared at Bucky’s shoes instead of his face. This wasn’t something he was supposed to pursue. This was a man without identity, a lost person in a body that Steve used to know, that was all. Bucky was gone. Even worse; Bucky was gone and the only thing that was still trapped in there, somewhere, was a brainwashed killer that was programmed to target him. This promised nothing but trouble.

Then again, there was still a chance, no matter how slim, that Bucky was in there. He’d felt it. Even with his brain put in a blender, they couldn’t change his heart, and that heart still belonged to James Buchanan Barnes. There was always hope, and hope was the drive Steve needed to give his heart and soul trying to fish his friend back out of where he was trapped inside that mind.

“Going for a jog?” Bucky guessed, as he looked Steve over. “Mind if I join you?”

The elderly lady pulled up her eyebrows with a pleased “ooh!”. Steve almost smiled.

“If you think you can keep up.”

There was a glint in Bucky’s eyes, just for a second, before he looked down and rubbed his neck. “How about this; if you let me join you, I’ll hold back for you, old man.”

Steve didn’t really know how to respond to that, except raise his eyebrows and laugh, even if it was just a few huffs with a closed mouth. _You’re still older_ , he wanted to say, _you still haven’t changed_ , he wanted to say, but he knew that those weren’t appropriate things to bring up. At least not in a subway train full of people that were gaping at them. “Fine. Sounds like a deal.”

* * *

It was actually kind of relaxing to run, even with all the turning heads and the not so whisper-y whispers. Just the steady beat of feet and breaths; it probably should’ve surprised Steve more how they had been in sync since the first step. It didn’t. Once a fellow soldier, always a fellow soldier.

“You know, I had a gut feeling about going out jogging today. Turns out I was right,” Bucky said, in between steps. Steve had expected him to be a little more out of breath by this point, in all honesty.

“Yeah? So you don’t jog often, then?”

“I do,” Bucky replied, as he swiped some sweat from his forehead and upper lip with the sleeve of his black hoodie. “Just not much of a Central Park goer.”

“You’re not from around here, then?” Steve guessed, or played along, he wasn’t quite sure anymore. The person running next to him had Bucky’s routine and Bucky’s instincts, but his mind was still one grey smoothie.

Bucky laughed. “Nope. Brooklyn boy, born and bred, for as far as I know.”

“For as far as you know?”

Something dark flashed across Bucky’s expression for a moment, before it passed and he laughed it off. “It’s nothing. So where are you from, then? Barely know anything about you.”

“Well, that’s new. Kind of makes you the only one in the entire city.” Steve kept his mouth shut for a moment to keep his breathing in check, and then went on: “I grew up in Brooklyn too. That was a long time ago, though.”

Bucky huffed; it was almost a laugh. “Yeah, that I did catch up on. Captain America, the man out of time. My neighbour’s a big fan, you know. She almost didn’t let me out of the complex when she saw me walk out. Kept babbling on about whether you were a good kisser.”

Oh. Well, then. 

“Said that you were terrible. Worst kisser I’ve ever had,” Bucky added, but the grin on his face said otherwise. 

“The rest of New York City seems to disagree.”

Bucky laughed. “So you kissed the rest of New York City too? And here I was, thinking I was special.”

Oh, he was special, alright. The gut wrenching irony left Steve with a sour taste in his mouth and a wry smile on his face. “Not exactly.”

Bucky laughed again, or at least made some sort of sound that was at least halfway close to a laugh, before he turned his face and his grin dropped. “Just kidding, you know. I’m not accusing you of anything. Hell, you strike me as the type who’d insist on a proper date first before even a quick peck on the lips.”

That made a smile tug at the corners of Steve’s lips, and he was glad that they were jogging through a turn, because he didn’t think that was one he could easily hide. “So you’re just tagging along to get that free fancy dinner out of me, then?” 

“Free homecooked meal, actually. Full of love and care,” Bucky teased. When Steve didn’t immediately respond, he added: “I kind of guessed you wouldn’t do restaurants. Because of your diabetes, you know.”

Steve stopped in his motion so abruptly that it took Bucky a second to figure out where he’d gone. Only slightly out of breath, Steve frowned and put his hands on his knees to lean on his legs a little as he let his mind mill that one over. “My diabetes?”

Now Bucky was frowning too. He pulled the elastic band from his hair, ran a hand through it (probably to let it breathe a bit, Steve presumed), and looked properly dishevelled when he dropped his hand again. “Could have sworn you had diabetes. Sorry, I just kind of… I thought I knew.”

Oh. Oh, God. Steve knew that it was probably just a cruel coincidence, that Bucky had probably read about his medical condition before the serum somewhere, but there was a part of him that hoped, that _prayed_ , that this was a sign that his Bucky was still buried somewhere deep down. “Well, you’re not wrong. It’s kind of fixed, now, but you knew.”

Something about those words seemed to surprise Bucky even more than Steve himself, because the next moment, he was both beaming and clearly confused. “I knew,” he muttered. “How about that.”

For a moment, they just stood there; the sun was breaking through, the temperature was rising, and Steve was sure that Bucky couldn’t be comfortable in his hoodie anymore, but he didn’t comment on it. Instead, he just reached out to him to fix the crooked hood in his neck - and let his hands linger on his shoulders for just a moment longer than necessary. It was only when he saw the terrified look on Bucky’s face, that he realised he was resting his hand palms on the base of his metal arm, through the fabric.

“I could still cook you that meal,” Steve finally offered, as he pulled his hands back and awkwardly tried to find a place to rest them instead as he talked. Finally, he just tucked them safely into the pockets of his sweatpants. At least he couldn’t flap them around like that. 

A careful, slow smile spread across Bucky’s expression. Steve swore he could almost see the beginnings of a blush creep up the length of his neck. He’d never seen Bucky blush before - or actually, it might have just been the damned heat, because of that hoodie. “Sounds fantastic.”

He could practically hear Tony yell at him already about his poor life choices, and he knew for sure that he’d have to go to Bucky’s place instead of attempt to take him into the Avengers tower - and maybe Stark was right, maybe he did have a point, but that was before diabetes happened.

Bucky remembered things, and maybe Steve formed the key to uncover the rest, too. He found a piece of the Bucky puzzle and no matter what Stark would say at this point, he knew that he wouldn’t stop until he’d pieced him back together again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't forget to leave a comment if you enjoyed it! I LOVE reading them!


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